The Rage of Dragons (The Burning Books #1) (37 page)

“You have to come now,” the injured Indlovu from Scale Osa begged. “They’re dying, all of them. The wing is torn to pieces. Only Scale Osa held. Inkokeli Okar was enraged by his Gifted and fought, but it won’t be enough.”

Tau, who’d begun pushing his way through the column when he heard Scale Osa was involved, was near the front. “Kellan,” Tau said, “he’s your inkokeli? What did the Gifted who enraged him look like?”

Jayyed was beside Tau. “Stand down,” he hissed.

“Who the char and…,” started Oluchi. “Oh, the Common of Kerem.”

The bloodied Indlovu from Osa showed no surprise at that. He was in shock. “You have to come. My scale… the prince, they die if you don’t.”

Tau turned to Jayyed, desperate.

Jayyed nodded, his mouth a grim line. “With respect, Inkokeli Oluchi, it is our duty to aid our prince.”

“Yes, yes! The prince is in danger. Hurry now, men. We go to kill slough-skins! You, there,” Oluchi said, pointing to a full-blooded Indlovu. “Pick six men. Three run to the claw south of us and three to the claw that’s north. Tell them to abandon the march to the flats. They have new orders. They will join us in turning back the hedeni that slew our Noble brother Odihambo.”

Oluchi reached into his belt and handed the man two wax seals with the Oluchi family name pressed into them. “Go now.” Oluchi turned to the wing. “We’ve marched for long enough. Now we run. We run to the defense of our queendom and our prince!”

The bloodied Indlovu from Osa led the way, and the wing ran, racing over uneven ground in the dark, racing to save their brothers from being cut down by the treacherous savages, the faithless hedeni. They did not go far before running headlong into the remnants of Wing Odihambo, in full retreat.

“Inkokeli,” called Jayyed. “We can hold here. We can form ranks and use this rise as cover.” Jayyed pointed to the incline that faced them. They were approaching a large gully that erosion, time, and an ancient and dried flow of water had cut into the mountainside.

Jayyed explained his strategy. “When the hedeni come over it, we’ll be waiting to turn the tide.”

Tau had no intention of waiting. Zuri could be over that rise. She could be fighting for her life. He would not wait.

“No, Jayyed,” said Oluchi. “Our prince could be over there. We take the fight to the hedeni. They will crumble against us!” Oluchi waved the wing onward. “Up and over, men! We’ll slake our swords’ thirst on hedeni blood.”

Oluchi and his scale charged the hill.

“Burn his tongue,” cursed Jayyed, ordering his scale to follow.

The Indlovu, taller and longer-legged, topped the rise before Scale Jayyed. By the time Tau crested it, there were already close to two thousand women and men fighting and dying on the path that ran through the shallow gully.

Some of Scale Oluchi had run down to the fighting. The men who did that had gone past their inkokeli, who stood staring.

“Goddess wept,” Oluchi said. “What is this?”

The battle was a mess. There were no lines of combat, no true distinction between Xiddeen and Omehi. The gully was a hundred pockets of smaller skirmishes, and in each of them, an outnumbered group of Omehi was in the process of being surrounded and cut down.

“Lost,” growled Uduak beside Tau. “Already lost.”

Tau wasn’t listening. He was scanning the tumult for any sign of Zuri, feeling hopeless. He didn’t see her. He’d have no chance of finding her.

“There,” Uduak said, pointing near the middle of the gully. A group of twenty Indlovu had their backs pressed to a boulder and were being harried by a much larger Xiddeen force.

Tau looked. He didn’t see Zuri but understood why Uduak had called for his attention. Relief flooded him. Zuri was there. She was alive. She had to be. Who else could be keeping Kellan Okar enraged?

“Okar fights there,” Tau yelled to Jayyed.

Jayyed saw the situation for what it was. “He’s trying to hold the center of the gully, give the remains of the wing time to retreat. He’ll die there.”

“He stays alive long enough and he saves most of the men in the gully,” said Hadith. “They’re holding the shortest path. The hedeni need to get past Okar’s line to finish the wing.”

“He won’t hold long enough, and going down there to help kills us as well as him,” countered Jayyed. “Look.”

Jayyed pointed to the gully’s opposite side. A massive force of Xiddeen warriors was gathering on its ridge, preparing to run down and into the gully. Many of the hedeni were mounted on creatures Tau couldn’t understand.

They rode lizards as tall as a Lesser’s shoulders that, from muzzled head to barbed tail’s end, were the length of two men. The creatures flicked their tongues at the air, smelling blood in the night, and their eyes glowed, reflecting what little light there was. The Xiddeen riding the beasts held spears that were much longer than the ones they used in hand-to-hand combat. Tau glanced to Hadith and Uduak to see if his friends saw them too.

“Big lizards,” said Uduak.

“The hedeni in the gully are the vanguard,” Jayyed said, ignoring the creatures’ presence. “The rest of the army is still gathering.” He pointed to the Xiddeen on the far ridge. “They’ve seen our claw. They’re waiting. When we commit, so will they. When they join the fight, it turns from bloodbath to massacre.”

A massacre. Zuri. Tau knew he should think about it more, but there was no time. He ran into the gully.

“Tau!” Jayyed shouted.

Twenty strides were all it took for Tau to be in the thick of the battle. A Xiddian holding a spear stabbed at him. Tau batted the clumsy strike away and thrust his razor-sharp bronze through the man’s chest. The man gasped as the life drained from his eyes. Tau yanked his blade free, felt his bile rise, swallowed it down, and ran on.

He was accosted by two more hedeni. One held a purloined sword and the other was a woman who had lost her spear. Her only weapon was a dagger. She saw Tau coming; he tried to go around her; she gave a cry and lunged. She was dead before she hit the ground.

Her companion, the one holding the stolen sword, swung it like a child. Tau’s counter ripped out his throat, and as Tau ran past, the dying savage scrabbled at his neck, his fingers too few to staunch the red river.

Tau took two more steps, and two more Xiddians died. Not wanting to be slowed, he curved around a swathe of slaughter, Omehi men dying to a crush of hedeni and their spears. And then, by the Goddess, there she was, Zuri.

She was a hundred strides away, her back flat against a boulder some avalanche had deposited at the bottom of the gully eons ago. Kellan’s group had gotten lucky. The fallen rock gave them a wall to which they could put their backs, and that saved their lives in two ways. It prevented the Xiddeen from encircling them and it allowed Zuri the protection she needed to enrage Kellan.

Fully enraged, Kellan stood head and shoulders taller than Uduak and must have outweighed Tau three times over. His sword dripped with gore and he roared with every swing, his blade coursing with equal ease through the air and through the bodies of all who faced him.

Not to be outdone, Kellan’s men played their part in the carnage. They held the line against the Xiddeen advance, dancing in and out of the fray, supporting their enraged inkokeli by ensuring the Xiddeen could not mass in enough numbers to overwhelm him.

Tau had grudging respect for the Indlovu’s bravery and tactics, but their efforts wouldn’t change the outcome. The citadel warriors were outnumbered, and with every breath, more hedeni boiled into the gully. The lizard riders were coming, skittering down the ridge on the backs of their fiends.

The Xiddeen, it seemed, had thinkers as clever as Hadith. They had not tracked straight from the ocean to Citadel City. They had gone the long way round the Fist, bypassing the plateau where Oluchi had hoped to engage them.

It was poor fortune. Given the prince’s presence, Wing Odihambo had hoped to serve as a rear guard to Wing Oluchi. They were not prepared for a fight like this. Tau moved closer, ready to fight his way past more Xiddeen and into the lines of the embattled Indlovu.

“Tau!”

He whirled and saw a furious Jayyed. Anan, Uduak, Hadith, Yaw, Chinedu, Themba, and all the men of Scale Jayyed were behind him.

“Jayyed.”

“Nceku! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I have to get Zuri,” he said, pointing to her.

Jayyed saw her and the anger fell from his face. It took Tau a breath, but he understood. Zuri wasn’t much younger than Jayyed’s daughter.

“Get her and we leave,” said Jayyed. He ordered his men into a fighting formation. “We’ll push through, bolster the Indlovu lines, but can’t stay. The gully is lost. That’s already determined. What isn’t yet determined is how many of us need to die in it.”

Tau nodded and pushed on, not waiting to see if Scale Jayyed followed. He killed a hedena, got to the Indlovu line, blocked the overzealous thrust of a terrified citadel initiate, shouted that he was on the half-wit’s side, and made his way into the ranks of Scale Osa.

Zuri saw him, and through the drain of maintaining Kellan’s enraging, he saw her surprise. Tau tried to smile, to reassure her. She did not look reassured.

Kellan and his red-stained sword flashed past Tau’s line of sight. Okar was doing as well as was possible given the circumstances. He was also taking hits that would have disabled or killed a normal man.

The enraging protected him, but there was a cost. Every blow Kellan took weakened the flow of energy coursing through him, and Zuri had to reinforce that energy by drawing more from Isihogo. The more energy she took in, the harder it would be for her to maintain her shroud. Already, she was rocking on her feet, her face wan, her eyes dazed. She couldn’t continue for much longer.

Tau had to get Zuri out, and the only sure way to do it was to make Kellan call a retreat. The gully was filled with Xiddeen, and Scale Jayyed didn’t have enough men to escape the battlefield without help. Tau needed these Indlovu, and they would listen only to Okar. Tau looked for the clearest path to Okar’s side and took it.

Wing Odihambo had not expected a fight, and the fight they’d found was with the entirety of the Xiddeen invading force. From its outset, the gully battle had been a lost cause. Tau knew this, as he knew the Xiddian in front of him would feint high and stab for his chest. He knew it with the same certainty he had when he leaned away from the thrust that the fighter had not yet thrown. And when the spear was thrust, Tau punched his sword up and through the hedena’s armpit, into his heart, killing him.

Kellan was close, but a Xiddian threw herself in Tau’s way. It was a warrior woman with full lips, caramel skin, and astonishing green eyes. She moved like an ocean storm, her bladework brilliant. He took her hand off at the wrist and she gawped at him, as if to ask why he’d done it. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t sure, but his bronze was hilt deep in her breastbone and there nothing to say that would have meant a damn.

“You!” Okar bellowed at Tau.

Tau wasted no time. “The battle is lost. Call a retreat.”

Okar stove in a Xiddian’s skull with the edge of his shield. “No.”

“We can’t hold.”

“They killed him,” Okar said, teeth clenched, his sword wheeling this way, then that, demanding that those who opposed him either leap back or die.

“Who?”

“The prince!”

“Prince Xolani?” Tau said, unable to imagine Omehi royalty being killed in battle. It made no sense.

Okar grimaced at the name like the failure was his. “He’s dead.”

“Us dying won’t bring him back.”

“Giving time for the rest to escape,” Kellan grunted, still swinging.

It wasn’t true. Well, it was true, but it wasn’t Kellan’s real reason. Kellan wanted to die here, and Tau wanted to accuse him of that. That wouldn’t get Zuri out, though. “You’ve done what you can. Leave now or the rest of your men die. Your Gifted dies.”

Kellan swung his sword, clearing ground between him and those pressing forward. He spared Tau a glance and cast his eyes across the battle, which had long ago become a rout.

“Inkokeli Okar,” Tau tried, “you need to save the ones in your care.”

That got through. “Retreat!” shouted Kellan. “Retreat!” But it was too late.

Down the line from them the Xiddeen backed away, revealing the horror their press of bodies had kept hidden. Chinedu was closest, and Tau called out, screaming his sword brother’s name, not knowing if Chinedu heard him or if he noticed on his own. Either way, Chinedu turned and faced the enormous and enraged Xiddian warrior.

Chinedu froze. He coughed. Then, bravely, he brought up his sword. It would, Tau knew, make no difference.

Daaso, headtaker for tribe Taonga, feared no man and had feared no man since beating her father bloody. Daaso had been young, her father drunk, and her mother had been in her father’s way. Her father struck her mother and Daaso struck her father, several times. After that, there had been only one more fight between them to settle the order in the house. Daaso, not yet a woman, ruled and her father followed.

This was unusual, even among the Taonga, who prized strength, but Daaso was unusual. She was bigger than everyone she’d ever met, and stronger too. She’d lost wrestling matches, but never twice to the same fighter. She’d lost spear fights, but never to the same warrior, man or woman.

Daaso had risen to be a great warrior of the Taonga. Everyone knew her name, and those who didn’t had heard of her deeds. She had fought in the fire-demon desert against the invaders and their black-robed witches. She had faced their small warriors, garbed in gray, and killed them by the dozens. She had battled their leather-and-bronze-armored men as well. They were tougher, faster, and used their swords like they were born holding them. She’d killed her share of them just the same.

Daaso had more than two lifetimes’ worth of honor, a handsome husband, and birth-paired daughters, both of whom she could see becoming ferocious spearwomen one day. Daaso was blessed, and her blessings had multiplied when she was chosen at the Conclave to be bound to a shaman who had learned the invaders’ magics. The shaman and Daaso had trained, and Daaso, who had already lived a glorious life, knew what it was to be one of the gods when the magics worked through her. They made her stronger, bigger, and faster than any mortal had any right to be.

Daaso, headtaker of the Taonga, feared no man, and with the shaman’s help, she stood just below the gods. She thought that fitting, since she would take a god’s vengeance for the evil the invaders had unleashed upon her homeland. She would cut her way through their stolen valley and uproot these vile people from the earth that their presence poisoned.

Daaso raised her spear. One of the small men was in her way. He was slim, he had a pinched face, his eyes too close together, and he coughed as if with illness. He looked surprised to see Daaso. The invaders had not expected the tribes to have their magics, and they always hesitated when faced by a woman.

The invader leveled his sword, moving faster and with more precision than most of the small men in gray. It didn’t matter. Daaso lashed out with a god’s strength, sweeping aside the coughing man’s sword and, with the same blow, taking the man’s head from his shoulders. The stupid look of surprise was still on his face as it spun through the air.

Someone shouted and came at Daaso. Foolish, she thought, to rally to the defense of a man already dead. Foolish, she thought, to come against Daaso Headtaker.

Daaso swung her spear at the running man, another small one, and was impressed when this swordsman ducked beneath the swing and came up attacking. Here, at last, was a challenge. Daaso jumped back, avoiding the small one’s thrust, spun her spear, grabbing near its point, and rammed its haft into her opponent. She hit him, breaking ribs, and the invader flew back, slamming into the ground. Daaso came to finish him off and heard another man calling to the one she was about to kill.

“Jai-ehd!”

Daaso looked over to the man who had cried. It was another small one. He was standing near the invader who had been magicked as Daaso was, but unlike the magicked invader, or any of the others, this small man carried two swords.

Even across the distance and death struggles separating them, Daaso felt Two Swords’ hate. It was palpable. Daaso made herself hold the look with the small invader. She smiled at Two Swords. Daaso feared no man, and if Two Swords cared for Jai-ehd, then Two Swords could watch him die. Daaso adjusted her spear grip and went to finish the good work she’d started.

The one named Jai-ehd scrambled to his feet. He was leaning to one side, unable to stand straight because of the ribs. He was older, Daaso realized, brave too. Daaso could admire that, even in an invader.

Daaso attacked and the wounded man blocked, staggering under the weight of Daaso’s crushing blow. Daaso darted her spear in and out at the swordsman and landed no killing blow. The man was good, better than any small gray Daaso had fought. He defended Daaso’s first two strikes with his blade, blunted the third on his shield, and countered with a straight thrust that took Daaso in the shoulder.

For a moment, Daaso worried the invaders’ magics would not do as the shaman had said. She worried that Jai-ehd’s blade would dive into her shoulder and deaden her arm, but the magic held and Daaso’s skin was like stone. The swordsman’s blade bit into Daaso’s flesh, but instead of losing the use of her arm, Daaso was left with little more than a cut.

Still, a lesson was learned. This small one should be taken seriously and the shaman had warned Daaso not to take unnecessary blows. Each time Daaso was struck it weakened the shaman.

Daaso swung at Jai-ehd with enough force to take his head. The small one danced back and out of reach. Daaso fired spear thrust after thrust at him and he dodged and pranced, or batted Daaso’s spear away. The battle between them was taking too long, and Daaso dashed forward, sending her spear ahead. The small one slipped to the side and Daaso reached out with one of her long arms, snatching up a handful of the small one’s tunic, so he could no longer scurry like a lizard on hot rocks.

Daaso, holding the small one still, thrust her serrated spear into and through the meat of the man’s leg. The small one, with terrible speed, brought his sword down onto Daaso’s forearm. The blow should, by rights, have cut the limb away, but with the magic flowing through Daaso, the blade bruised instead of severed.

With no desire to test the shaman or his limits, Daaso tore her spear free from the small one’s leg in a shower of blood. The invader shook Daaso’s hand off his tunic and tried to step back, a mistake. As weight came down on the leg, with half its thigh muscle detached, it buckled.

The man fell, his expression a mask of fear and pain. He did not cry out, though. He had not when Daaso ripped his leg, and he did not when he fell. Daaso respected that, and Daaso knew the invader would cry soon enough.

Daaso raised her spear high, and with all the speed and strength the magic gave her, she slammed its point into the swordsman’s gut, out his back, and into the dirt beneath him.

The swordsman screamed, dropped his sword, and curled up around the wound, reaching for the spear impaling him. Daaso wrenched her weapon clear, its serrations doing more damage on the way out. The man gasped, fell back, and vomited blood.

Daaso declined to take his head. Leaving him as he was would make for a worse end. He’d linger and he’d suffer, which was as it should be. Cruel, but better than any of them deserved.

Daaso stepped back and turned in the direction where she’d last seen Two Swords. Two Swords was coming. Daaso had known he would and Daaso had just enough time to make a mess of him. She’d kill Two Swords and then retreat, allowing her shaman to rest.

Only, there were too many Xiddeen between them. Two Swords would never cross the distance without taking a dozen spears in the back. Daaso thought to go to Two Swords. They could come together, like in the old myths, and settle their spear feud, but the magicked invader was over there and Daaso had taken an oath.

The Xiddeen warriors chosen to be imbued with this invader magic had sworn to Warlord Achak that they would not face the similarly magicked invaders. There were too few Xiddeen who had been trained to be magicked, and the warlord did not want any of them to die because they had decided to test their honor.

Daaso felt frustration. She was not afraid of the magicked invader. She would kill him as she had killed a hundred others. However, she had made her oath and her word was bone.

Daaso backed away from the front lines, ready to leave the battle, for now. She had wanted to kill Two Swords, but there was no point waiting. The small man would be lucky to make it halfway to her before some spearwoman or man punched holes through him.

No, Daaso would go, allow the shaman the rest he needed. She would take a drink of water and return to behead more invaders. Her mind was made up when Two Swords cut a spearman in half and called out to Daaso.

Daaso chuckled. The small one had spirit, and she stayed to encourage the fool, to see how the little man would die.

Two Swords threaded his way through several spear thrusts and killed three warriors as quick as Daaso could count them. The invader paid the dead and dying no mind, coming on fast. Daaso blinked and another was cut down. There was something strange happening here, and Daaso, experiencing the first stirrings of discomfort, tightened her grip on her spear.

There were still too many Xiddeen between them to think the gods would grace Two Swords with a glorious death by Daaso’s hand, but Daaso was fascinated. She watched as Makara, one of tribe Taonga’s best spearwomen, faced off against Two Swords. Makara’s spear was legendary and she had two other Taongans with her.

She came at Two Swords from the side, lashing out without warning. She’d always been fast and aggressive. Somehow, Two Swords had seen her. He swayed to the side and lunged at Makara. Then he spun, extending his other sword and catching the second spearwoman, who had gotten too close. Without care, Two Swords turned his back to Makara and killed the third spearwoman, finishing that warrior with a sword through the neck. Daaso had no idea why Makara waited. The invader had his back to her. He was defenseless.

Makara dropped to her knees, the back of her tunic soaked in a pool of blood. She collapsed, dead. Daaso had not even seen the blow that had taken her life, and once again, Two Swords was coming.

A young spearman, who was not so young that he should not have known better, leapt at the small invader, shouting his war cry. Two Swords killed that poor fool without changing the pace of his stride. Then, finding Daaso again in the crush of bodies, Two Swords broke into a sprint.

He was yelling. Daaso had no idea what he said or what it meant, but the commotion drew the attention of the nearest spearmen and women. Two Swords killed the closest four in less time than it took for Daaso’s heart to beat. With those last gone to the gods, Two Swords was close, close enough for Daaso to see his eyes, to see the demon in them.

The invader yelled to Daaso again, the string of words unintelligible, their meaning unmistakable. It was a challenge. It was a call to fight, to settle their spear feud.

Daaso felt the magic flowing through her. It made her skin hard as stone, amplifying her strength and speed, making her bigger and heavier than three small men, and Daaso, headtaker of tribe Taonga, who feared no man under all the gods, readjusted her spear grip, breathed deep through her nose, turned, and ran.

The small one screamed his frustration at Daaso’s back. Two Swords could not follow. Pushing further into the Xiddeen and away from his own people would mean destruction.

Daaso was safe. She kept running. Daaso Headtaker feared no man, but she knew the truth. Two Swords was not a man.